Apple releases 2TB and 3TB Time Capsules, new Airport Extremes

Apple is on the verge of updating its Airport Extreme offerings and may …

Apple has updated its AirPort Extremes and Time Capsules, and may have already started the process on the latter. What do we mean by that? Apple's Time Capsule page has already been updated to reflected new 2TB and 3TB models (the previous model only had 1TB of storage), though when you click through to purchase, the Apple Online Store only shows the old, 1TB model.

Various sources, including 9to5Mac, published part numbers for three new devices: a fifth-generation Airport Extreme and two new fourth-generation Time Capsules. Soon thereafter, the Federal Communications Commission published Apple's filing for the new Airport Extreme, indicating that a release is fast approaching. As noted by MacRumors, Apple usually times the release of FCC documents for the day the company actually plans to unveil the product, meaning that official releases should come sometime today.

Rumors about new AirPort Extremes and Time Capsules have been going around since at least the beginning of June, and there was some talk that Apple would be trying to use Time Capsules as an intermediary cache for software updates for Mac OS X and iOS. So far, Apple's updated Time Capsule page doesn't seem to indicate that this feature is shipping in the final product, but we'll update if that changes.

(Update: the 2TB Time Capsule is now being listed for $299 and the 3TB version for $499. Apple has also updated its Airport Extreme store page and it's still being listed for $179.)

Most people don't want to fool around with setting up dd-wrt, so you're probably not the target market. Also, considering those routers don't come with a hard drive and the Time Capsule is, it's reasonable. The 3TB one is a ripoff price though. Guess if you have to have it, you have to have it.

I waited quite a while before buying an Airport base station because I found the price prohibitive, but I must admit I am sold on the Time Capsules. The key thing is that they just work. They are really easy to configure and once automatic backups are turned on they do their work in the background without requiring users to ever plug-in a hard disk or trigger anything. You can hook up an external USB drive to the Time Capsule for archive purposes so you can do a weekly rotating off-site backup.

And, on several occasions I've been able to completely restore a machine after a hard drive failure. The key point of any backup solution.

They are expensive, but they are quite nice Wi-Fi base stations in addition to being the backup location. And, as a key component of a backup solution which works very well I think they are a good investment.

That said, do the new Time Capsules have any features other than just bigger hard drives?

Ok, so what is the difference between the new Airport Extreme and the old one? 'Cos nothing is jumping out at me!

Yeah- that's my question too- wasn't the old one 3x3 antennas? I'm not sure what else they can do to improve the Airport Extreme. (I am not saying they are perfect now, just that I honestly don't know what else can be improved to keep pace with other routers-any info would be welcome)

Ok, so what is the difference between the new Airport Extreme and the old one? 'Cos nothing is jumping out at me!

Yeah- that's my question too- wasn't the old one 3x3 antennas? I'm not sure what else they can do to improve the Airport Extreme. (I am not saying they are perfect now, just that I honestly don't know what else can be improved to keep pace with other routers-any info would be welcome)

And it doesn't support Time Machine or iTunes in a way that Apple will stand behind. It doesn't server as a wireless and wired router. I have to assume you're a troll since this is a completely apples-and-oranges comparison you're making. If you're in the market for a backup solution and a router, you aren't building an HTPC.

Ok, so what is the difference between the new Airport Extreme and the old one? 'Cos nothing is jumping out at me!

Yeah- that's my question too- wasn't the old one 3x3 antennas? I'm not sure what else they can do to improve the Airport Extreme. (I am not saying they are perfect now, just that I honestly don't know what else can be improved to keep pace with other routers-any info would be welcome)

QoS comes to mind. And guest networks. Ability to update DynDNS. Web-based configuration that doesn't require software to be installed. (I have to laugh about this one. They made a big deal about being able to configure routers via iOS - something I've been able to do with just about any other brand of router made in the past 10 years. lol)

While I think Apple has one of, if not THE most reliable/stable consumer router around, there is plenty of room for improvement.

Son of a bitch! There's FINALLY QoS on this thing? I have no need for the extra room solely for backups, but the QoS actually has me looking at the bloody thing. It's a fucking shame they haven't had it in there all along like any other router out there.

Ok, so what is the difference between the new Airport Extreme and the old one? 'Cos nothing is jumping out at me!

Yeah- that's my question too- wasn't the old one 3x3 antennas? I'm not sure what else they can do to improve the Airport Extreme. (I am not saying they are perfect now, just that I honestly don't know what else can be improved to keep pace with other routers-any info would be welcome)

Apple could bring back the external antenna port - AirPort Extreme range is lousy and not having external antenna support was a dumb decision.

Are Airports still incompatible with SonicWall VPN, which I have to use for my work PC? I had to get a Linksys for this reason.

Not to be a fanboy, but to me it seems that Time Machine is the best backup software ever made. It automatically backs up multiple versions of all files, including everything needed to make a bootable drive. My work IS guy has been looking for something like this for Windows, but all the Windows backup software we've looked at sux. Does anyone know of a Windows backup program that does everything Time Machine does? Thanks for any good suggestions.

It depends on your perspective. Don't get me wrong, for techies, it's a complete ripoff.

However, for people like my mother-in-law and parents, Time Capsules are worth their weight in gold. The overpriced thing works with Time Machine to automagically take frequent backups and store them over wifi. To get any lost data back, you go through the Time Machine interface to the point in time where you want to restore, and it pulls it back down. Want to restore 1 file? Pick it out. Want to restore a directory? Select that. Want to restore your entire machine to the state it was in 3 months ago? It does that. I haven't seen another product on the market that does what Time Machine/Capsules do that is as easy to use.

To give you a use case - my MiL accidentally duplicated every song in her music collection, loaded them into iTunes (screwing up her iTunes library), then while trying to address that, blew away her entire music collection. She even emptied her trashcan. If TM/TC hadn't been taking automatic backups of her Macbook Pro, she would have lost everything. Because I had forced her to buy it, I was able to walk her through restoring her music folder to the day before and resolved the issue.

Looking at the hardware specs this thing contains just a single disk 2-3TB Disk without any kind of redundancy. Must be great losing 3TB worth of backups. Typical Apple Product.

It's for backup, not archiving.

If it's for backups then there should be multiple copies. That's how people who do serious backups do backups. You can be creating garbage for days or weeks or a single piece of media can fail. If you're going to bother, then you might as well try and do it right. Otherwise you are taking advantage of n00bs and giving them a false sense of security.

Most people don't want to fool around with setting up dd-wrt, so you're probably not the target market. Also, considering those routers don't come with a hard drive and the Time Capsule is, it's reasonable. The 3TB one is a ripoff price though. Guess if you have to have it, you have to have it.

If you aren't tied to unecessarily proprietary solutions, the extra bullet points that a Time Capsule offers really aren't terribly compelling. Although if you are even in any position to want this thing then you are already stuck in that particular mire already.